


selbstzerstörend, nicht dumm

by celativesolipsist



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Boundaries, M/M, Some kissing, vague reference to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 00:16:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18927439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celativesolipsist/pseuds/celativesolipsist
Summary: Andrew's point of view of that one scene in Eden's, plus what he did directly after, with all the German dialogue actually in German.





	selbstzerstörend, nicht dumm

**Author's Note:**

> just trying to get a feel for Andrew's personality here, bear with me.

     Andrew hadn’t expected Neil, hadn’t expected how he would wriggle his way into Andrew’s thoughts, posing a conundrum that Andrew, high on drugs he had to take, had kept turning over and over in his mind like the fidget toys they give small children, like a little handheld manipulative puzzle, like a box with some hidden trick to getting the lid open. Neil had to be fake, he had decided, because nothing real acts like that, and looks like that, and is that captivating. A series of balancing acts that always seemed just shy of falling completely undone.

     Then the drugs were gone, and the reality that Neil hadn’t changed in manner (though his looks had, his hair, his eyes always blue now) was annoying to Andrew. His lies were annoying, his loyalty was annoying, the way he thought he could at all fix things or make them better was annoying, the idea that he could save Andrew, of all people, who the world by now should have figured out was surely beyond that sort of saving, was annoying.

     The way he kept making Andrew trust him was annoying, his clothes were annoying, his obsession with Exy was annoying, the way he was so determined to be self-sufficient was annoying...

And so were his eyes, and so was the way he moved, and the way he set his shoulders and tilted his chin when he was about to tell someone off. So was the fact that the errant thoughts that crept in, the idea of kissing him, of pressing him up against the wall and taking him apart, would all amount to nothing.

     Neil was nothing, too. The way the bits of honesty he offered served to complicate him and the way he continued to carve a niche in Andrew’s life were nothing. Something to occupy the time and make life interesting. A distraction. Something to fiddle with.

     And then at Eden’s Twilight again, after so much time away, no doubt all of them looking a little worse for wear. Especially Neil, who was coming back from the bar now, the long-sleeved black shirt Andrew had picked out for him clinging in a way Andrew let himself appreciate for half a moment. He thought back to earlier that evening, when he had touched his fingers to the scars decorating that torso, a bullet wound, the imprint of an iron, and all the myriad knife slashes. Not always on the run, maybe, but always running. Abram, a pocket puzzle with more and more components every time Andrew looked.

     Neil set the drink tray down on the table, and Andrew reached for a shot as Neil sat down next to him. Neil sat facing him on the stool, and glanced askance at Kevin before addressing Andrew in German.

     “Warum denkst Roland, dass du mich fesselt?”

     That required a moment. Neil’s wrists were still rubbed raw and angry from whatever trials he had suffered over winter break at Riko’s hand, and the shirt didn’t quite cover the marks. Andrew lowered the glass he had been about to drink, and tapped his fingers in arrhythmic staccato upon its edge. This was another step in the game of truths and trust he and Neil played, nothing more. He’d answer the question; nothing more.

     “Wahrscheinlich denkt er dass du mit Anweisungen so schlecht wie ihn bist. Roland weißt, ich mag nicht, berührt zu sein.”

     “Du hast meine Frage nicht beantwortet.” Yes, Andrew had. His answer had been the face-value response.

     “Es ist die Antwort. Wenn es dir nicht gefällt musst du deine Frage ändern.”

     A brief pause there, while Neil digested that.  “Ich will noch eine Runde spielen,” He said. “Was ist außer Coach’s pay grade?” Pay grade. Andrew hadn’t ever seen that used in German before. Bezahlebene, maybe? but it wasn’t something that needed to have focus in this moment.

     How to phrase it, in German, so that Neil might understand.

     “Als Coach uns unter Vertrag genommen hat, hat er uns versprochen, raus von unsere privat Problemen zu bleiben. Er hat gesagt, dass er ist nur bezahlt um unser Coach zu sein, nicht mehr und nicht weniger.”

     “Ich dachte ich war kein privat Problem. Du hasst mich, oder?”

     Now he was getting it, just barely.

     “Jeder Teil von dir. Das meint nicht, dass ich dich nicht blasen würde.”

     Andrew watched Neil blink once, his arms going tense and his knuckles going white where he gripped the edge of the chair between his thighs. A nervous reaction?

     “Du magst mich,” Neil said, and Andrew didn’t let it sound like an accusation. Bee would be proud. But he still let it sound like a lie; Bee would perhaps be less proud of that, but she would understand.

     “Ich hasse dich,” he corrected, and Neil took a yet longer moment to respond. Andrew saw Kevin take another shot out of the corner of his eye, and tapped his fingers on the edge of his own shot glass again. Neil was too flighty, too much a scared rabbit, no matter how much and how often he tried not to be, taking himself to the den of the predator and getting tied up like some sort of perverse sacrifice for no good reason. Bee frowned in Andrew’s head at that; Neil had clearly thought any length he could go to to spare Andrew pain was worth it, no matter how stupid that was. No matter that it didn’t make a difference. As always, Neil was as stupid as he was unreal. He was interesting, and dangerous, and somehow still trustworthy. Andrew hated him for it.

     “Du hast nichts gesagt,” the unreal boy said at last.

     “Warum sollte ich? Nichts wird davon kommen.” Andrew shrugged. Neil didn’t swing; any ideas Andrew entertained were his own problem, not Neil’s. Andrew didn’t want anything, he didn’t need anything; he had been planning on keeping this to himself.

     “Nichts,” Neil echoed, sounding perhaps even more lost than before.

     “Ich bin selbstzerstörend, nicht dumm. Ich weiß besser.” He had had to look that word up the first time he had wanted to use it, back when the language was a bit newer to him and Aaron, and Nicky had still been trying to figure the twins out. Selbstzerstörend. A useful word to know, if your last name was Minyard.

     “Ok,” Neil said, and after waiting a moment longer to see if anything else would be forthcoming, Andrew picked up the shot he had put down earlier and knocked back the liquor before dropping the empty glass back on the tray and getting out a cigarette. Only as Andrew stood up did Neil speak again.

     “Du bist dran.”

     Andrew considered that as he put the cigarette in his mouth and stowed the pack in his pocket.

     “Muss ich nicht jetzt machen.”

—

     First, Andrew went outside to smoke.

     He hadn’t planned on telling Neil that. The idea had been to keep it to himself. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you” sounds an awful lot like “I want to blow you” and Andrew doesn’t want, usually, not like that. Not so acutely. Sure, he’d fooled around with a boy or two, cautiously and haltingly, in juvie, and sure, he and Roland had had their arrangement, which had worked decently considering how bad Roland was at the hands-off rule, because no matter how Roland had to be reminded not to touch, he had always been very good at keeping his mouth shut and keeping what happened between them private. Now Andrew had just admitted to Neil that rules could have exceptions, declared himself capable of something heady and unreal in a way he would have to work to balance out and keep himself safe from. And he’d have to ask Neil something back, sometime, and it would have to be something good. He’d think on it a bit longer before he chose. He had admitted to more than he had planned to tonight, and it annoyed him.

     And as for Roland. Andrew stubbed out his cigarette and tossed it in the direction of the trashcan before reentering the club.

—

     He walked back through the kitchen and the hallway to the break room, where another bartender was checking his phone.

     “Jeff,” Andrew said, “I’m going to borrow Roland for a minute.”

     Jeff looked up from his phone at Andrew. “How long is a minute?”

     Andrew didn’t respond, turned on his heel and headed for the staff entrance to the bar. He heard Jeff grumble something, but then the sound of his footsteps on the tile as he half-jogged the few steps to keep up with Andrew’s pace as they both entered the bar. Jeff slid around Andrew and tapped out for Roland, jerking his head back at Andrew when Roland’s brow furrowed in confusion. As soon as he made eye contact with Roland, Andrew turned around and walked past the break room to the supply closet next to it. He turned on the light inside, and heard Roland close the door after him. He turned around to look at the taller man, who made no move to speak, instead waiting for Andrew’s explanation with a quirked brow.

     “You’re usually so good about keeping your mouth shut,” Andrew said.

     Roland grimaced. “I thought you two were together,” He admitted, “He’s the first person to join your little posse permanently since what’s his name — the tall one.”

     “I was never with Kevin,” Andrew pointed out mildly.

     “You might’ve been, if he wasn’t so dead set on being straight,” Roland replied, his mouth curving into the semblance of a smirk.

     Andrew shrugged. “Kevin wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut.” That was true, in a way. Kevin was able to keep a secret, but he was too bossy. He would have asked too many questions, pressed Andrew in ways Andrew barely tolerated on the court and would not tolerate in the bedroom. Also, he was straight.

     Roland put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything,” He said.

     That didn’t change what had happened, but it would have to do. Andrew wasn’t sure how Neil would end up reacting to today’s revelations. It didn’t matter, anyway.

     Andrew tilted his head, and took a step forwards. “Have you taken your break yet tonight?” A fifteen-minute break every four hours was state law, and Andrew knew from his own time at Eden’s that the establishment took that fifteen minutes seriously. A lot could happen in that fifteen minutes.

     Roland considered Andrew, then put his hands behind his back, backing up until he hit the door. Andrew followed, pressing against Roland’s body, one hand tilting his jaw and the other warningly on an upper arm as he leaned up to kiss the other man. It was maybe a minute later that Roland tilted his head, breaking off the kiss. “I have, actually, taken my break,” Roland said, smiling apologetically. “Jeff is probably getting pissed by now.”

     “Tease,” Andrew scoffed, but Roland shook his head.

     “You’re not gonna get with me to distract yourself from that boy. I have standards, Andrew. We haven’t done this in a long time, and we’re not going to start up again just because you want to prove something.”

     Andrew looked at Roland, blinked, then took a step back. Roland nodded, and slipped out the door, closing it again behind him. Andrew spent a moment considering Roland’s words, then disregarded them: he had nothing to prove. Neil was nothing.

     Andrew stood there in the empty storage closet for far longer than was necessary, thinking of scarred torsos and bright blue eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> the german is the best translation of meaning I could come up with for these lines in the text, which mean they don’t line up word-for-word with the original, necessarily, but rather use phrases and particles of speech that are more german in my opinion, or more in line with how those ideas could be best expressed in german. I just finished a semester-long translation project, can you tell?
> 
> the fifteen minute/four hour law is a thing in SC, right? it is where I live. is it federal? who knows, I'm not bothering to research it. 
> 
> Can y'all believe this is my first ever fanfic for this fandom? then again I post a fic what, once every year or something? wild. thanks for reading!


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